THE BACKSTORY
The Candelabra and the 'White Gold' of the Ballestas
The seaside geoglyph the boat pauses beside, and how the islands' seabird droppings once ran Peru's economy.
See Paracas & Huacachina tours on GetYourGuide ↗The Candelabra
On the way out to the islands, the boat slows beside the Paracas peninsula so passengers can see the Candelabra: an enormous geoglyph, roughly 180 metres tall, carved into the sloping hillside above the sea. Unlike the famous Nazca Lines inland, the Candelabra was made to be read from the water, and one long-held local belief is that it served as a landmark for sailors. Its true age and purpose are genuinely uncertain — navigational marker, ceremonial symbol, or something else — and there's no firm evidence tying it to any one culture, which only adds to its strangeness as you drift beneath it.
The islands' stranger history
The Ballestas have a backstory most visitors never hear, and it's extraordinary: for a stretch of the nineteenth century, the seabird droppings on these very rocks were among the most valuable substances on earth. Guano — accumulated over centuries into mounds reportedly up to fifty metres tall — is a superb natural fertiliser, and as European and North American agriculture discovered it, Peru found itself sitting on a fortune in bird excrement.
'White gold' and a war
For decades, guano was Peru's chief national income — 'white gold' — funding the young republic and drawing foreign interest to its coast. The wealth was also a source of conflict: competition over guano and the nitrate deposits further south was a factor in the War of the Pacific of 1879 to 1883, in which Peru lost territory to Chile. It's a remarkable thought on a wildlife cruise — that the noisy, guano-caked birds you're photographing are the descendants of colonies that once shaped the economy and borders of a nation.
The birds today
The frenzy eventually gave way to conservation. In 1909 an administration was created to protect the birds and manage the guano sustainably, and today the colonies are largely left in peace, with guano still gathered in a controlled way roughly once a decade. The islands became a fully protected area in 2009, which is why no one lands on them now. So the boat trip you take is, in a small way, the happy ending to the story: the 'most valuable birds in the world' left to their rocks, watched from a respectful distance.